There are warnings, but not everyone hears

LORI CULBERT, Vancouver Sun06.02.2014

Sometimes she hitchikes, sometimes she walks, Liza Nooski, 19, admits to hitchhiking occasionally, she says her and her friends have changed the way they thumb rides because of the high-profile Highway of Tears investigation.

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NEAR STELLAKO, B.C. — The slight figure has pulled the hood of her white sweater over her head, for some feeble protection from the cold late-November wind, and nearly blends anonymously into the snowy background of this barren stretch of Highway 16.

Liza Nooski, 19, trudges along the tarmac where it turns due north to curve around the west end of Fraser Lake, the bottom of her pants covered in the brown sludge that lines the road after sanding trucks cover the previous night’s snowfall.

A Vancouver Sun reporter and photographer pull over to offer Nooski a ride. It’s nippy outside. She’s happy to accept.

Earlier that morning, Nooski tells us, she hitchhiked more than 20 km from her home on the Nadleh Whut’En reserve on the east end of the lake to the town of Fraser Lake, situated between Vanderhoof and Burns Lake on Highway 16.

She lucked out this day, as her cousin picked her up and drove her to town, where Nooski took her 15-year-old sister out for a meal during the high school lunch break.

Then, to kill some time before her sister got off school, Nooski decided to walk the 4.5 km to Stellako, a nearby native community, where she can save money on taxes by buying minutes for her cellphone at the native-run store.

Nooski is a polite, soft-spoken young woman, who admits to hitchhiking from time to time. There’s no public transit from her reserve to Fraser Lake. She has no money to buy a car.

Some local communities have shuttle bus services, such as from Stony Creek into Vanderhoof. But there are none in the area where Nooski lives, she says.

She is careful, she insists, to only get into vehicles with people she knows or who do not look dangerous. She doesn’t feel nervous, she tells us.

“Usually I take care of myself on the highway. I usually don’t get in unless it’s my friend or my cousin [who is driving],” she says. “If it’s a guy I don’t know, I don’t usually get in the car.”

Nooski has read in the newspaper about the so-called Highway of Tears investigation, a police probe looking into the disappearances or deaths of 18 girls and women along major B.C. arteries, including Highway 16. She has also seen posters about the case in her community.

Nooski says her friends have changed the way they thumb rides because of the high-profile case, but she is worried her younger sister’s friends still feel invincible while hitchhiking to Vanderhoof or Prince George.

“They’ve seen the posters up, but they don’t really listen. I tried to tell them,” Nooski says.

Improved bus service is one of the more than 30 recommendations made in a 2006 report following the first symposium held in Prince George for relatives of the girls and women on the Highway of Tears list.

It is the first recommendation in the report, and it reads: “That a shuttle bus transportation system be established between each town and city located along the entire length of Highway 16, defined as ‘The Highway of Tears.’ ”

“I’m frustrated because I don’t feel like any of those recommendations have been followed up on,” said Grainne Barthe, with the North Coast Transition Society in Prince Rupert.

She said it is common in northern communities to try to catch rides to rural towns, as there are few other ways to get around.

There is semi-regular bus service from Prince Rupert to Terrace, but nothing to places like Kitimat or Hazelton. The bus will also take you to Smithers, but won’t stop to drop you off at Moricetown along the way, Barthe said.

“I don’t get the feeling that anything is safer for women today. I think one of the biggest problems for the north is that we are disregarded by the Lower Mainland,” said Barthe, who is originally from Montreal.

“I’ve never heard any government official or RCMP say there is a killer on the loose. You can create some safety just by saying that because right now, it is so abstract.”

Another key recommendation from the symposium was to erect billboards along the highway to increase public awareness of the case, as part of a “victim prevention program.”

While driving along Highway 16 last month, The Vancouver Sun passed four of these billboards in communities like Gitwangak, Thornhill and Moricetown.

Two of them read “Hitchhiking: Is it worth the risk?” There is an eerie image of a teenaged girl hitchhiking on a road lined with tomb stones, as two mournful ghosts hug her legs and cry on her shoulder. A caption says, “Ain’t worth the risk, sister.”

The billboards indicate they are often sponsored by local governments and reserves, and occasionally by businesses and the provincial government.

Prince Rupert city council approved putting up a billboard, but no action has yet been taken there. Prince George tried to erect a sign, but ran into trouble because the city doesn’t own the land along the highway.

Many people in the north, including Highway of Tears coordinator Mavis Erickson, hate the tone of the billboards, arguing they suggest the victim is at fault for agreeing to get into a vehicle.

“I resent that as first nations women they kind of consented to their own death, that they somehow consented to what happened,” Erickson said with exasperation during a recent interview in Prince George.

“The media and RCMP portrayal, throughout the years, referred to the women and girls as high-risk so immediately people think they were doing something they shouldn’t have done, and somehow they deserved it.”

The reality is, Erickson argued, that the majority of the victims are teenagers and if you miss your school bus in a town like Smithers, there aren’t a lot of other ways to get home if your family can’t come to pick you up.

“They are not women, they are girls. They are missing girls. They are school children,” she added.

Erickson is a Harvard-educated lawyer who last spring took over the position of Highway of Tears coordinator. The job was created after families at the symposium demanded better communication with police and other authorities.

Erickson has met with the solicitor-general to try to secure funding to get some of the recommendations implemented, she said, but right now her office is run on a “shoestring budget” on a year-to-year contract that expired Dec. 1.

Carrier Sekani Family Services in Prince George, where her office is located, has provided some bridge financing as she tries to line-up future funding, she said last week.

The previous coordinator held youth forums and produced safety tool kits for the communities. Erickson argues one of the greatest needs is to increase safety and security for women.

If the Lower Mainland can have campaigns to keep boys out of gangs, she asked, why can’t there be something similar in the north to remind girls and women to stay safe on the highways? That could include poster campaigns to tell girls, for example, to travel in pairs after dark or to pre-arrange a driver.

“The province and Canada has a long way to go to improve safety and security for First Nations women. We need an educational campaign and transportation,” Erickson said.

There is also a need for following up on another recommendation: placing emergency phone booths in well-lit rest areas along the highway, she added, as there is no cellphone service during the long treks between communities.

Craig Benjamin, of Amnesty International Canada, questions if police need to be more forthcoming about their investigation, and if they need to warn the community about any other risk that links these 18 victims together. “I really wonder when police have their 18 names and they’re not taking the effort to be really clear about the numbers,” he said, “are they aware of the consequences of that uncertainty?”

Barthe took part in organizing “Take Back the Highway” rallies in the north a few years ago, as a twist on the “Take Back the Night” events that call for more safety for women. They had T-shirts made up for the Prince Rupert demonstration that said: “There’s a killer on the road.”

Quoting reports done by advocacy organizations like Amnesty International Canada, Barthe’s organization argues the number of missing and murdered women who belong on the Highway of Tears list is double the existing number.

“There are women who are missing who are not counted. My question is: Why not?”

Others in the north reference the Native Women’s Association of Canada, which in a recent report said there are 520 “known” cases of native women going missing or being murdered. B.C. leads all provinces by a wide margin, with 137 cases.

Police say their list was composed based on criteria the cases need to meet, and a geographical boundary that does not include all of B.C. Police argue there is no proof a serial killer is on B.C. highways.

But even the 2006 symposium report acknowledges the total number of victims is constantly questioned. “There is much community speculation and debate on the exact number of women that have disappeared along Highway 16 over a longer 35-year period; many are saying the number of missing women, combined with the number of confirmed murdered women, exceeds 30,” the report says.

Some family members of those on the Highway of Tears list argue they don’t see significant improvements for women in the north since their loved ones went missing or were murdered.

Sally Gibson, the aunt of Lana Derrick, who disappeared near Thornhill in 1995, said the symposium brought some improvements — such as police keeping in better contact with families — but she doesn’t think it is any safer today for young women to travel between communities.

“If girls want to get somewhere and if they have no money or vehicle, then hitchhiking is often their method of transportation... Everyone believes it will never happen to me,” Gibson said.

“If we pick up hitchhikers we give them heck all the way to wherever they are going. They get a lecture the whole way.”

Cory Millwater, whose daughter Tamara Chipman vanished on Highway 16 just outside Prince Rupert on Sept. 21, 2005, believes schools could do a better job of talking to students about safety on the highways and hitchhiking — especially for rebellious teens.

“Somehow these young girls — maybe in the schools they have to be made to understand how dangerous it is,” Millwater said.

One day not long ago, Millwater picked up a hitchhiker she thought was about 12 or 13 years old, and told her about the devastation of losing her daughter.

Millwater dropped the girl off in nearby Port Edward, and then later that day saw the same girl hitchhiking again. “I hitchhiked across Canada when I was 16, and I never believed anything would happen to me. When you’re young, you think you’re invincible,” Millwater said, tears welling in her eyes.

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